The Kismetic Strategist

Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. -George Herbert

In today’s SaaS-driven world, it is easy and tempting to purchase every tool that comes along, without consideration for the 10/90 Rule: spend 10% of your budget on tools and 90% on the talent using them.  That said, there are a plethora of tools that can optimize and streamline your marketing efforts, increase your inbound leads, and make your life easier.

Here then are six core marketing tools with a total starting budget of $275 per month:

1. Wordpress. At the bargain price of free, Wordpress is can host your content, whether its a small blog, or a robust site with a built-in social network.  If you don’t have a functioning website, I would recommend registering for a Wordpress.com account immediately and exploring some of its features.
   1. Key Add-on: Thesis. This Wordpress tool turns your basic blog into a beautiful, SEO friendly website without the need of a coder.
2. Google Analytics.  Another tool with the ROI of infinite, Google Analytics can arguably do more for your online business than any other tool.  Worried you won’t have time to analyze the fire hose of data?  You’re not alone: I’ve seen many small businesses put adding GA to their site because they don’t know how to use it.  But there is a better approach: add Google Analytics to your site, today, acknowledging you won’t look at the data for a year.  That year of data will offer a crucial perspective when you (or a future analyst) begins to look at the data for feedback to your business.
3. Unbounce.  Starting at $25/month, Unbounce provides landing pages to capture leads.  Why not use a simpler web to lead form, such as in Salesforce?  Unbounce provides A/B testing and analytics so you can brainstorm 1-4 ideas for a page and let them duke it out for the best choice.
4. DemandBase.  So you have a B2B website, you’re tracking visitors for later analysis, and you have functional landing pages.  Where are your leads?  DemandBase will let you see the firmographic information about your anonymous web visitors.  Did someone from Cooley visit your website?  For about $1.50, you can purchase the contact info for the head of technology there.
5. Google AdWords.  Some industries may have more success with Bing or Yahoo, but the fundamentals are the same: PPC marketing provides a repeatable, predictable cost for lead generation.  Many marketers fall into the trap of paying a high amount for top words.  If you keep reminding yourself a lead is a lead, you can drive new traffic to your site for five cents per click.
   1. Key Add-on: Little publicized, Google’s new Remarketing feature will allow you to purchase banner advertising targeted at segments of your website visitors.  Done right, this can increase repeat visitors and strengthen their perception of your brand and size.
   2. Key Add-on: Google’s Search Based Keyword tool can quickly give you a seed list of keywords based on your website content; with some Excel wizardry, you can identify the group that will fit into your budget and build a cost effective campaign in two hours.
6. Demand Generation System.  Are you dreading creating new content to keep your leads engaged?  With Hubspot, Genius, or Marketo, you can create drip marketing campaigns tailored to the buying cycle and your target segments.   Starting at as little as $250/month, these tools will allow you to nurture to your prospects while you sleep, test variations to optimize your content, and pass qualified leads to sales so they spend less time prospecting.

Set these tools up in a few days, and you’ll have the infrastructure needed to acquire qualified leads, nurture them on behalf of sales, and gain valuable feedback to improve your message.

“Think big, act small, fail fast; learn rapidly” -Mary and Tom Poppendieck, Lean Software Development

Originally a four part quote focused on software development, the “fail fast” part is gaining traction among startups.  Although many have an opinion as to its merits, I haven’t seen a reasoning for its ability to spread.  Here then are some reasons it would be popular, regardless of its merit:

• With the economy where it is, the probability of failure will be higher, and this increases the (perfectly rational) fear of failure.  As a result, rewarding failure is a nice psychological judo move, and it encourages more people to start a company knowing the odds.
• The developer driven startups will tend toward analysis paralysis; encouraging failure is a cure for this. (”Ready Fire Aim” versus “Ready Aim Aim Aim”)
• In step with the increasing rate of change, the lean software development methodologies have gained adoption over more traditional linear methodologies.  With more developer driven startups, its natural to apply a developer credo to the business planning; hence the adoption of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup methodology.
• “Fail fast” implicitly assumes the only alternative is to “fail slow”.  While not accurate, this makes failing fast appear to be the better option.

In an upcoming post I’ll look at some business scenarios where this meme may or may not be true.

Startup Weekend will reach San Diego in just seven days. If you don’t know: Startup Weekend is a 54 hour event where entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, designers, scientists, attorneys, and investors congregate to start new projects or businesses. Check it out here.  If you’re going to Cool As Ever Tech tomorrow (along with Matisyahu), we will be there to answer any questions you have.  Or you can just purchase your ticket here.

From Karthick Gopal’s Observations:

Inspired by this quote, my friend Khushboo decided to explore running for City Council;  If she gets 10,000 fans she will run on a platform of voting based on polling her constituents.  You can support her here.

Red Bull does not contain anything from a bull.  Taurine is also found in infant formula.

Jagermeister does not contain elk blood.

That chain letter where some large organization is donating money is not true.

I am pleased to announce I will be moderating the first Bootstrappers Breakfast San Diego.

Starting a company can be a lonely experience; many entrepreneurs are focused on their product, and don’t have the time to go to networking events full of MLM and Real Estate types.  Bootstrappers Breakfast strives to be different; our format allows you to discuss your challenges, candidly, with other lean startup entrepreneurs.  We won’t help you get VC funding, but we will help you get your product to market, find a counterpart to complement your strengths, and discover a community of people like yourself.

The first breakfast will be Tuesday, January 26, 2010; thereafter, they will be the fourth Tuesday of every month.  If you want to come but aren’t a member of Meetup, feel free to contact me to RSVP.

More info about lean startups, courtesy of Eric Ries:

“Happiness is a positive cash flow” – Fred Adler

In a business, cash flow is the “the excess of cash revenues over cash outlays in a give period of time (not including non-cash expenses)”.  If the definition sounds technical, that’s because it is: outside of accounting and finance readings, this isn’t a very common phrase.

In layman’s terms, cash flow is the amount of money in your bank account: if you have a large paycheck coming to you soon, but you are overdrawn, then you are cash flow negative.  On the other hand, if you have a lot of extra money in your account, but you owe it to others, you are (at the moment) cash flow positive.  So Adler is basically saying happiness is having more money in your bank account than you spend.  Simple, right?  And it applies:

1) How many fights in relationships are over money? This usually isn’t how to split extra cash, rather it is about not having enough at the end of the month; essentially, negative cash flow causes these issues

2) The happiest people I know live within their means. For example, a good friend, in 2005, lost his government job and spent about eight months looking for his next position. Yet he was (and is) one of the most positive people I know. One of his secrets? He lived on about half of his income, and the rest was put into investments and rare splurges.  In other words, he maintained positive cash flow for so long that he had the cushion to fall back on when he needed it most.

3) Cash flow is essential for most small businesses.  About 25 percent of new businesses fail in the first twelve months: the “cash is king” mantra suggests cash flow is one of the biggest causes of failure (as does Mark Cuban).  If you think your happiness is tied to being your own boss, then, Adler’s quote is true for you.

Looking back at the three examples, they are more about reducing misery than increasing happiness.  But maybe these are the same; if so, learning some accounting basics can increase our happiness.

Permission Marketing is a relatively new idea: evangelized by Seth Godin, he defines it this way:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

Search Advertising is a large market: Google is set to post revenues of more than $4 Billion this quarter alone. So it is understandable that many companies, including AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo, want to take some of this money away from Google; as a good capitalist, I can understand.

My complaint is with their methods.  Recently I updated my Yahoo Messenger; after completing this, I found Yahoo had installed their toolbar without an obvious location to opt out.  They also attempted to change my home page and default search; to this, Google’s toolbar fought tooth and nail, resulting in a dialog box war.  When I removed the toolbar, Yahoo actually added a menu with links to their pages, where my favorites menu previously lived.  This is not unlike a door to door salesman offering a free sample, then redecorating your kitchen with his branded wallpaper.

Today, I updated AIM, and the default installation included much of the same: they wanted to change my home page, default search, etc.  To their credit, the opt out was visible and easily accessible.  Again, however, this is not creating a permission asset, but attempting to meet a quota for users by force.

Search Advertisers should intuitively understand permission marketing: the act of clicking on an ad because it is relevant to your search query is a foundation to permission marketing.  Why,  then, are they attempting to change my entire web experience because I chose to download one tool?  If Twitter or Facebook did this, they would suffer from a significant PR nightmare.  Search Engines, please stop seeing your free tool as leverage to control my lens of the web; while audible banner ads are annoying enough, this is simply intolerable, and will result in a loss of market to open platforms such as Meebo.  [end of rant]

As I explore starting and building a company, I have become acutely aware of the choices people make. From my perspective, there are five ways to choose a name:

1. Name + Type of Business (in my case, “Moody Web Redevelopment”)
2. Name (just “Moody”)
3. The Disney strategy (”Analytics World”)
4. A completely new word (Moodeedalytics)
5. Unique Selling Proposition (Fast Web Analytics)

Looking at these options, #1 seems to be very common with small business owners, as well as #2; for many, putting their name “up in the lights” is a bigger motivation than creating a thriving business. The question, though, is “so what? who are you?”

The Disney strategy, similarly, is common for retailers: create a name that aligns you with a tribe, while emphasizing your size. If you build a Skirt Land, the thinking goes, every consumer of skirts will want to visit. See also the Field of Dreams approach.

The completely new word is a solid strategy; web companies, in particular, benefit from a unique word by purchasing an inexpensive domain name. So Flickr, Digg, Omniture, and Semphony, for example, created value in a bargain location. This is also great if the new word reflects your tribe; Flickr evokes pictures, Digg evokes “digging” through the web, and “digging” things you like. At the least, these names should tell a story; drop.io, for example,

Another great strategy is the unique selling proposition (#5). If your business is beach photography, A great name would be “Sea Breeze Photo“; in real estate, a similarly positioned name might be LandByTheSea. In signed memorabilia, a great name might be “Authentigraphs”.

Some might disagree; the top ten law firms in the U.S. are all surnames of partners; this is similarly true for accounting, and incredibly typical in consulting, and real estate. But this still applies to the Unique Selling Proposition: if you are a law firm, an accounting firm, or any other company that requires a high level of trust, a personal name connotes security and trust.

Conclusion? Think twice before sticking your surname on your business card and calling it a company. If your value is trust, this is a great strategy. If your value is something else, figure out what that is and weave it into your name in such a way that creates a story. If your primary marketing will be online, finding a new word may be an effective method.

After switching my majors at least five times, I finished with a BA in Philosophy in 2007.  Although initially afraid of the job prospects, I don’t regret my choice for a moment. Here then are seven reasons you should major in Philosophy:

1. Dr. Frankenstein was a philosopher. Yes he was also not real, but this illustrates a key facet of philosophy: it is the fountain from which sprang Biology, Math, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology, among others; the ability to learn these disciplines, beyond rote memorization, is fundamental to philosophy.
2. Philosophers make more money than average, according to Payscale.com.   Among graduates who don’t pursue a higher degree (and many philosophers do), Philosophers make more than most other liberal arts majors, including English and History.  The lower number, relative to more technical degrees, is indicative of the additional training that may be required for philosophy students, and the higher variance in ability among liberal arts students (as opposed to technical majors.)
3. You plan to go to law school. Perhaps because philosophy majors don’t make a lot of money initially, they tend to head to more practical programs like law.  Philosophy is an ideal preparation for law school, because it requires dense reading, dense writing, logical analysis, and the desire to argue every minute detail.
4. You enjoy business/entrepreneurship. General business requires both the ability to logically analyze, and the creativity to guess the future.  Because Philosophy mixes the symbolic logic with the big questions, philosophers are better prepared to succeed in business than MBAs.
5. You plan to learn your whole life. Philosopher, literally translated, means “lover of wisdom”.  Do you love wisdom?  If so, you will probably spend your spare time reading, long after you get your degree.  Philosophy teaches you to read difficult materials fast, break down the arguments, and find the assumptions.  The knowledge you get from a technical degree can be learned on your own.
6. You enjoy Philosophy. Philosophy often requires fewer classes than science oriented majors, but these classes can be every bit as rigorous.  If you are lazy you can get through a philosophy degree without a lot of effort (there are plenty of classes not requiring intense analysis.)  If, however, you enjoy the challenges, philosophy offers a lot of high level, abstract material.
7. You want your kids to grow up curious. Faced with the choices of a computer science degree and a philosophy degree, I chose philosophy.  Why?  I thought about the day when my kids would ask “What did you major in?” and I smiled when I thought about explaining philosophy to them.